Robinson Intermediate, Aurora

Robinson Intermediate is part of the Aurora R-VIII School District in Aurora, Mo., which serves 2,103 students in kindergarten through 12th grades. Currently, Robinson serves 355 fifth- and sixth-graders with 57 percent in the free and reduced-price lunch program. Our intermediate school was formed in 2007, as a result of a new high school opening which caused our district’s reconfiguration. We also began the PLC process during that first year.

At Robinson, the vision for our students is written collaboratively with collective commitments aligned to the district’s mission of all students becoming successful learners. Our vision involves three areas. Within learning, we have high expectations for alllearners, use research-based practices and assessment-driven instruction. Our school’s culture demonstrates a positive attitude toward learning, change and collaboration. We strive to involve our community by showing a cooperative attitude and sharing the responsibility of empowering children to learn, acknowledging accomplishments and using effective communication.

Teachers utilize backward design to create common assessments and lesson plans. Power Standards have been determined considering MAP data, required knowledge for future grade levels and life skills. These common assessments drive the common lesson plans developed by teams of teachers for the entire grade level. These common formative assessments are used as assessments for learning and are scored for mastery and determine tiered levels of enrichment or intervention. Summative assessments are assessments of learning which are recorded in the grade book and the standards-based grade card. A continuous cycle of assessment, enrichment or intervention is used for ensuring all students master the Power Standards. Key to the success of this learning process is that students are given their performance results within 24 hours of the assessment with specific, descriptive feedback. Students are intrinsically motivated to do well and are anxious to earn mastery to remain in their enrichment groups.

Data guides everything we do at Robinson Intermediate School. We use a battery of assessments to ensure that our students are consistently growing. Student performance data is gathered from common formative and summative assessment, benchmarkassessments and the MAP test in order to inform students, parents and teachers about each student’s progress. This data is also used by the teachers to make adjustments to lessons and to make flexible groupings in order to meet students’ needs more effectively. Our building’s MAP scores show this daily attention to student data, and the teaching and learning strategies used in our lesson plans are having a positive effect on student achievement.

Our PLC ride has been a bumpy one. We began “storming and norming” during our first year as we changed buildings and administrators and tried to fit our way of doing things into the PLC format. We spent our first year just learning about PLCs and becoming comfortable with each other. As we look back, our first task was to learn trust. Classroom doors were opening, and it was scary. Our leader resigned after the first year and we began “storming and norming” with a renewed fervor with our new leader. During year two, we became a team focused on one goal: to ensure that students learn. Each year since then, our PLC ride has been a little smoother as we continue to focus on the same goal and striving each day to meet it.